It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

 

Type: Board game, Co-operative with defector

Suggest Ages: 12+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 1hour+

Replay-ability: 9 out of 10

Expansions available: Not Officially (Some Unofficial talk here)

Cost: Approximately $35

 

So if you like co-operative games, but you miss the competitive aspect of non-coop, then you might want to look into co-operative games that have a defector. In Betrayal at the House on the Hill, all of the players begin on the same team. You're a group of explorers finding omens, events, and items in an old haunted house. Until the time when "the Haunt" begins, at which point a player becomes a traitor or there are monsters or both! This game can be pretty spooky, given the haunted house, creepy event cards, horrifying items (including weapons like the blood danger), and even worse omen cards!

The game starts with three pieces of the board the basement landing, the upstairs landing, and three rooms on the main floor: the entrance hall (where all players start), the foyer, and the connecting downstairs landing to the upstairs landing. In the beginning of the game there is no way for a player to get to the basement, and even once a player makes it to the basement, there is often not a way for the player to get out of the basement. This happens because there are multiple room tiles that cause players to take a one-way trip to the basement.

Room tiles are what build the game board. Each player can explore house in whatever direction they choose as long as they follow the number of moves they have. You explore new rooms but going through doorways of the house into rooms that have not get been discover. You then find a room title in the stack marked accordingly (ground, upper, basement) and place it on the board so that it's door and the door you entered through are connected.

The basement.

Room tiles usually have special symbols on them that tell you which card to draw (event, item, or omen). The play continues this way with players drawing items and decreasing and increasing their player stats according to the cards and room tiles until the Haunt begins.

Each die has two blank sides, two sides with one, and two sides with two.

The Haunt begins when a player fails a haunt roll. After each Omen Card draw, the player has to make a haunt role. The player roles six dice to determine whether the haunt will happen. The player must role equal to or greater than the number of omens out on the board in order to avoid the haunt. For example, if there are four omens on the board, a player needs to role a four or higher.

Once the haunt begins, there is a traitor attempting to murder/change/whatever the other player either alone or with a group of monsters or the traitor turns into a monster. There 50 different haunts outline in the traitor's guide and the survival guide of the game. Once the haunt occurs, the traitor leaves to read about their objectives and the heroes stay to talk about their objectives. The heroes have to be careful not to give away information to the traitor or vise versa because neither party knows the full story.

Overall, this game is super fun to play. There's a horror-movie-esque feel, but even if you don't particularly enjoy horror movies, it's still worth a shoot, especially with the right people. You can play in character if you want and it makes it that much more fun to make up how the people arrived at the house together and how they are all related and what their motivations are. But if you're not into doing that, then it's just as fun to simply play the game!

The replay-ability of this game is crazy! There are 50 different haunt scenarios, the game board is never the same, and the characters are great. I love learning about the new haunts and trying to figure out what is going to happen next.

Just a note though: There are a lot of punch out tokens, so you might want to have some Ziploc bags ready when you open this game. That's probably the only downside I see for this game.

Save the World Together: Pandemic

February 10, 2014

Save the World Together: Pandemic

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

Type: Board game, Co-operative

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 45min+

Replay-ability: 7 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes

Cost: Approximately $40

 

Introducing, Co-operative games! Co-operative games are games in which everyone playing (or most people playing) are working together to defeat the game. These games are the best for many reasons. You can play them with sore losers, people who always win, and people who are nervous about learning new games because the sore losers can't be upset about the game, an object winning, the always-winners only win if you do, and the nervous people don't have to feel like they're playing alone against people who are already better than them. 

I really recommend this game to everyone. Co-operative games build relationships instead of destroying them... And also I think this game would be great for teaching (older--8+) children teamwork, listening skills, and strategy. (We all know that even adults need to relearn these skills! Myself included.) The reason I list listening skills is because the rules explicitly state that members have to agree about certain actions before other players can take them. 

So what is Pandemic? 

The premise of Pandemic is that every members is apart of a team of science/health related individuals who are trying to save the world from 4 diseases. These diseases are represented by different colored disease cubes (red, blue, yellow & black). Each of these diseases attacks different sections of the board. For example, the yellow disease is located in southern USA, South America, and Africa.

From this angle, you can see how the diseases are located in different areas. You can also see the cure vials.

 When a city has three disease cubes (like Santiago does in the photo above), there is the risk of an "Outbreak". An outbreak occurs when a city that already has three disease cubes gets pulled from the "infection deck" again. Santiago is probably the best place for an outbreak to happen because the mountains prevent it from being connected to any other city except Lima. An outbreak causes the "outbreak counter" to go up one space. If more than seven outbreaks occur, the game is lost. The outbreak also means that any city connected to the outbreak city receives one cube of that disease color. In the case of Santiago, only Lima would get a cube. 

Here is a view of the entire board. The green cards are the "infection deck" that cause cubes to be place on different cities each turn. The Outbreak counter is to the left. The infection rate counter is under the infection deck. And the blue cards are the "cure deck."

Each turn: each player has four actions per turn. They can move to different cities, remove disease cubes, build research stations, give/take cards from other players, and/or cure a disease. Each player has a specific role that comes with special abilities. For example, the Medic can remove all the disease cubes from one city for one action and remove all disease cubes of a cured disease by simply entering that city. He's (probably) the most helpful role, but everyone gets a special ability. 

To win the game, you have to cure all four disease. There is only one way to win, but there are multiple ways to lose. This idea seems to be common to co-operative gaming. I think the idea is that if there are multiple people working one problem then the problem has to be more difficult. Anyway, you lose pandemic if 1) there are more than seven outbreaks, 2) the cure deck runs out of the cards before you can cure the diseases, or 3) you run out of disease cubes.  

 It is VERY important to read all of the rules! My friends and I played this game wrong for so long because we neglected to read everything. (Duh!) But now we play it right and still love it! 

If you play this game and decide you love it, you can share that love with the game creator, Matt Leacock, on Twitter. I tweeted at him, and he actually replied!! 

You can also see this game played on YouTube with Wil Wheaton on his TableTop Series. 

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below!